Missed saying the "they always come back" referred to people like Clare wanting to be back with the people and the culture in which she grew up.

One of the difficulties of people of mixed race, which Nella Larsen herself experienced, was not being seen as belonging to either part of her family, and so always being an outsider.

That has certainly been true of indigenous Australians who were taken from their mothers because of being of mixed race. Their lives were often appalling, as many suffered abuse: physical, sexual and certainly racial. When they eventually found their way back to their indigenous families, they felt they did not belong there either, because they did not speak the language, did not know the culture and so could not "belong" in either world.